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Gabriel Gill, left, Jace Bauer, rear, Jared Einberger and his brother, Riley Einberger, play a video game during the grand opening of the Player 2 Arcade Bar Thursday, April 12, 2018, on College Avenue in Appleton, Wis.
Ron Page/USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin

Game players tackle an assortment of video games beneath film posters during the grand opening of the Player 2 Arcade Bar Thursday, April 12, 2018, on College Avenue in Appleton, Wis.
Ron Page/USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin

Felipe da Silva and Verali Alarcon share a laugh as they play a video game during the grand opening of the Player 2 Arcade Bar Thursday, April 12, 2018, on College Avenue in Appleton, Wis.
Ron Page/USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin

A pinball game is reflected in Rachel Ubbelohde's glasses as she plays a game during the grand opening of the Player 2 Arcade Bar Thursday, April 12, 2018, on College Avenue in Appleton, Wis.
Ron Page/USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin

Jordan Mosher and Brooke Whitten play a video game during the grand opening at the Player 2 Arcade Bar Thursday, April 12, 2018, on College Avenue in Appleton, Wis.
Ron Page/USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin

That doesn’t mean you should no longer be able to slide a coin into a machine and make E. Honda repeatedly palm-smash the face of Zangief.

Or stomp the heads of countless Goombas and Koopa Troopas in an attempt to rescue Princess Toadstool.

Or do … whatever it is that little noodle-nosed Q*bert guy does.

With the opening of the new Player 2 Arcade Bar last month in downtown Appleton, those beloved pastimes of the Pocket Change era are back. Merging the video game arcades that were like a utopia for many kids and teens of the '80s and '90s with, well, a modern day drinking establishment, it's the Fox Cities' first foray into what's become a national trend.

Behind Player 2 are co-owners Marissa Emerson and Michael Joyce, an engaged couple who recently moved to the Fox Cities from Minneapolis to open their first bar. They're both 35, meaning they’re at the perfect age to have funneled quarters as kids into both the mid-'80s "Pac-Man" and then the multi-player "X-Men" a few years later.

Located at 215 E. College Ave. in the space formerly occupied by Knotted Pianos, Colt's Timeless Tavern and Ravens, Player 2 is home to an always-evolving collection of about 40 games, including three pinball machines and a Nintendo 64 console. From the late 1970s ("Space Invaders") through the '80s ("Galaga," "BurgerTime") and '90s ("The Simpsons," "Street Fighter II") into the most recent decade ("Guitar Hero Arcade"), the target demo ranges from people in their 40s down to the 21-year-olds who want to check out the games the kids in "Stranger Things" obsess over. (There’s no "Dig Dug," yet, but it's one Emerson said she has an eye out for.)

Much by design, Player 2 is a place of pure nostalgia. There are walls lined with movie posters, from "Top Gun" and "Gremlins" to "Titanic" and "Space Jam." The TVs scattered about the first of two large game rooms aren't tuned to ESPN or CNN, but instead show muted movies like "Edward Scissorhands," "Terminator 2: Judgment Day" and "The Sandlot."

It's the Fox Cities' first arcade since the demise of the Valley Fair Mall, meaning it's been more than a decade since repeated calls of "Hadouken!" rang out in the public sphere. And playing the role of Doc Brown — transporting bar patrons back in time — is a big part of the thrill for the Player 2 ownership team.

"That's the best feeling: 'It reminds me of my childhood!'" Emerson said. "I love that we can capture that and share that."

Then, of course, there's the whole aspect that wasn't part of the arcade experience back when you had to use a payphone to tell Mom you needed a ride home: booze. Player 2 has 10 taps, a wide variety of craft beer — mostly in 16-ounce cans, which create much less of a disaster when spilled on antique electronics compared to a pint glass — and a full bar for mixed drinks. ("We encourage people to play (games) for shots," Joyce said.)

Each machine is flanked by a shelf installed for the purpose of holding both a drink and a token cup. So far, revenue has been about two-thirds alcohol sales and one-third gaming.

Oh, and a word to the wise: Don't try sliding a quarter into any of the Player 2 machines. All the games work on tokens, which are sold at the bar for a quarter each. Besides simply being kind of cool — they feature the bar's P2 branding — they also serve as a way to encourage return visits. You leave with tokens in your pocket? You'll want to make use of them someday.

PRESS START

The quest that brought Emerson and Joyce to this point in time began about two years ago, when Joyce picked up his first pair of games: "WWF Wrestlemania" and "NBA Jam Tournament Edition." At the time, he was working as a finance manager for a car dealership, as he'd done for about 10 years before, but he'd started to think seriously about an adventurous new career path.

"It was lucrative but at the end of the day, there was just this looming feeling of guilt," he said of his decade in sales jobs. "It was like, hey, you’re not doing anything good for the world."

Joyce began to build up his collection, driving all over the Midwest to pick up the 400-pound games for anywhere between $500 and $1,000 a pop. By the time he and Emerson finished scouting locations — they needed to find the right building in the right part of town in the right city — they had more than 30 games packed into a U-Haul trailer destined for Appleton.

"Once we came to visit, we loved it here," Emerson said. "Everyone was so nice."

The space they found was just what they were looking for. It had already been a bar in its past lives, was in an ideal spot on College Avenue and was in the sort of city Joyce and Emerson could see their 3-year-old son growing up in. It certainly didn’t hurt that there wasn’t another full-fledged retro arcade bar within a hundred miles, either.

"There are a lot of sports bars, a couple clubs (on College Avenue)," Joyce said. "The closest thing we could compare it to is Cleo's, and when you walk into Cleo's, it's an all-encompassing environment. It's immersive. That’s what we wanted to do, was create an immersive environment."

LEVEL UP

A Bloomberg story from 2015 pointed to a place in Portland, Oregon called Ground Kontrol as a catalyst for the bar arcade (or as it's sometimes dubbed, "beercade") trend. In the early 2000s the owners started filling their bar with games because their clientele had a habit of heading elsewhere around 8 or 9 p.m. Before long they had dozens of classic arcade games and pinball machines.

Bars stuffed with arcade cabinets have popped up in many cities across the country in the years since, as the kids of the '80s and '90s settle into adulthood, begin careers and become a reliable demographic to cater to. Now Chicago has its collection, including four Emporium Arcade Bar locations. New York, San Francisco and many other major markets do, too.

Minneapolis has a few varieties, including Up-Down, a major inspiration for Player 2. A few years back, Emerson and Joyce were living within walking distance of the place that packs 50-plus games, skee-ball alleys, a Nintendo 64 and has 60-plus beers on tap.

"They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery," Joyce said. "Admittedly, that’s who we’re taking a note from. We walked in there and it might have been one of our first times in there, we were like, 'Can we do this?'"

It's been only a few weeks, but the early indications are promising, he said.

PERFECT COMBO

"People think it’s a fad because the arcades are a new concept, but people go to bars for anything," said Dan Bush, part of a two-man team that operates Analog Arcade Bar in Davenport, Iowa, and who served as a resource for Emerson and Joyce. “Why would games be detriments? If bars alone exist, then why can’t arcade bars exist?”

Fad or not, Appleton seems to be among the early adapters in Wisconsin. The first of these bars in Madison, I/O Arcade Bar, is still aiming to open this spring.

In Milwaukee, a place called 1983 opened in December. Though there are a few other places in the city to grab a drink and work a joystick, 1983 is its first all-out arcade bar.

"I think what gets people to come for the first time is nostalgia. It's very nostalgia-driven," Bush said. "People say, 'I've played this game at the bowling alley or the movie theater when I was growing up.' That's their first step in the door.

"The problem is that's not sustainable over time. Then it becomes, how do you build that culture around it, building a community so people come again and again and again?"

In an effort to do just that, Player 2 has hosted a handful of tournaments and will continue to do so moving forward. A big one ahead: A "Guitar Hero" competition on May 21 with a grand prize of two tickets to see Weezer this summer in Milwaukee. They've also hosted "Mario Kart 64," "Super Smash Bros." and "Street Fighter II" tournaments in their first month.

While there's that obvious demographic of thirty-something men who grew up button-mashing "Mortal Kombat" and collecting Ninja Turtles, so far the owners have been pleasantly surprised that their crowds have included more women that one might think.

Also on a recent evening, Joyce worked the front door checking IDs. While the majority of people were dudes in their 20s, he said a fair amount of people in their 40s and 50s were trickling in.

"(They were) all doing the same thing — co-mingling. You can see this guy Jim Smith over here was really well taken care of, Oxford shoes and a nice suit. Then you had a kid with dreads (near him) playing a different game," he said. "It's really a full-spectrum place and it's really what we're trying to create, a place that's open to everybody."

WE HAD TO ASK

Most expensive game? Not including pinball machines, which are upwards of $5,000 a piece, the answer is "X-Men" or "Rampage World Tour." Both were in the $1,500 range.

Games on the wish list? "Tapper," "Gauntlet," "Dig Dug" and "Punch Out," among others. "I've tried four times to get 'Punch Out' and every time it falls apart," Joyce said.

Most popular games? "The classics are pretty big," Joyce said. "'BurgerTime,' 'Ms. Pac-Man,' 'Galaga.' ... Everyone loves 'Donkey Kong.' ... The four-players, too. People like 'X-Men' and they like 'The Simpsons' and 'Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.'"

Owners' favorites? "Personally, the 'Arkanoid.' That for me was like no way that will ever leave here unless it blows up," Joyce said. Emerson's favorite? "Guitar Hero."

THE COLLECTION

Player 2 Arcade Bar has about 40 different arcade games, and owners Marissa Emerson and Michael Joyce said they’ll be rotating new (but still old!) titles often based on popularity. Here’s a sampling of the current lineup: